Tough
love school sent
to timeout•
Academy's
doors closed indefinitely

By James VarneyTimespicayune.comNow that
the shouting from teenagers and police
and prosecutors has faded, there is
something almost pastoral about Academy
Dundee, this hotel cum tough-love school
near the sea.

Stone
fountains gurgle among the
hacienda-style buildings, the foliage is
lush and green, and a brilliant sun
burns on both the swimming pool and a
pond with an elevated wooden walkway
leading to a small island. In the
cavernous dining center, some of the
handful of remaining staffers eat with
parrots perched on their shoulders.

But the
story behind this snapshot is anything
but serene. Academy Dundee never made it
as the tourist spot its builder intended
it to be, and it is closed not for the
summer but possibly for good. The tumult
began in October, when Carey Bock of
Mandeville arrived and, accusing the
behavior-modification program of being
more brutal than beneficial, marched her
twin sons out the door.

The saga
grew even more bizarre at the end of
May, when Costa Rican authorities
invaded the campus, told the roughly 200
American teenagers enrolled there they
did not have to stay, and arrested the
school's owner and founder, Narvin
Lichfield.

The
echoes of that wild day, which Lichfield
said included outdoor orgies and
vandalism, are still reverberating. A
criminal case is in motion against
Lichfield, 41, in the nearby mountain
town of Atenas, Costa Rica, an
accusation of torture has been filed
with the United Nations, and Dundee's
supporters and critics are engaged in a
battle concerning tactics at Dundee and
at 10 other schools chartered by the
World Wide Association of Specialty
Programs, based in Utah. The brouhaha
has thrust the company and its
curriculum into an international
spotlight.

All these
developments come as no surprise to
Bock.

"I
think the closing of Dundee was
inevitable," she said. "I
believe the only reason that Dundee had
remained open as long as they had was
because they were operating under the
radar of the Costa Rican regulatory
agencies. The children at Dundee were
subjected to cruel and inhumane
treatment; there is no doubt about
it."

Bock is
not the only New Orleans-area parent in
the fray, and not everyone shares her
harsh view. In a recent letter to the
Tico Times, a popular English-language
weekly circulated in Costa Rica, Yvette
Miller of Harvey said Academy Dundee had
done wonders for her daughter.

"I
am so happy with the school and what it
has done for my child," she wrote,
saying the girl had opened up in ways
the mother never dreamed possible.
"Dundee Ranch did this for
her."

The
hullabaloo has prompted both the U.S.
Embassy and PANI, the local child
welfare agency, to claim they were on
top of the situation and had been
raising red flags for months -- claims
greeted with skepticism in some
quarters.

"I
think what we're witnessing here is a
real cover-your-ass scenario," said
Bruce Harris, the executive director of
Casa Alianza, a children's advocacy
group that last month asked the U.N.
Committee on Torture to investigate
Dundee.

Lichfield
dismisses Casa Alianza as unqualified to
pass judgment because Harris never
visited Dundee or spoke with any of its
staffers.

That
criticism is a red herring in Harris'
view. Though he conceded he hasn't seen
the school personally, he said the
group's complaint was made on the basis
of at least three sworn statements from
parents and children about what went on
at Dundee, and the agency is trying to
arrange for other former students to
return to Costa Rica and testify against
Lichfield.

"The
reports we've gotten from parents and
kids relate what we regard to be cruel
and unusual," Harris said,
mentioning physical restraints on
concrete floors, using food as coercion
and lack of adequate health care.
"They were breaking kids down, all
right, but they weren't building them
back up."

Lichfield,
meanwhile, says it's his reputation that
needs to be rebuilt. Barred from leaving
Costa Rica for six months while the case
is investigated, he is holed up in a San
José hotel. He's no monster, he said,
but rather the victim of a monstrous
misunderstanding.

"As
far as I'm concerned, Costa Rica came in
here under spurious allegations and
closed down a place that had operated
without incident for two years," he
said. "I know exactly what is abuse
and what isn't, and there was no abuse
at all at Academy Dundee. We never held
any kids there against their will. I was
like Uncle Buck to those kids."

Lichfield,
who spent 24 hours in custody following
his arrest, said he is unaware of any
ongoing criminal investigation of him or
his school and hopes to reopen for
business within two months.

But that
may be overly optimistic. Prosecutors
confirmed there is an ongoing probe of
activities at the school, but no date
for proceedings has been set. Meanwhile,
both sides are busy gathering
depositions, statements known in Costa
Rican law as "anticipated
evidence."

"Tough-love"
or "behavior-modification"
programs such as Academy Dundee --
Lichfield is an owner or part-owner of
similar establishments in New York state
and South Carolina -- are controversial
by their nature. With tuition and costs
topping $2,000 a month, they're designed
for troubled teenagers and make no bones
about the rigors they impose on them. No
one denies, for instance, that physical
restraints were a part of the Dundee
experience.

"But
if it sounds like it was hurting people,
it's not like that at all," said
Antonio Cespedes, 16, a Costa Rican who
essentially has been managing the school
since it was shut down. "It was
used only to calm people down."
Cespedes credits the school with saving
his life after he turned to drugs two
years ago.

Dundee is
not the only school chartered by the
World Wide Association of Specialty
Programs that is in the hot seat. In the
past few years, a girl committed suicide
at the Jamaica school, and authorities
in both Mexico and Czechoslovakia filed
criminal charges against the couple who
ran WWASP schools in those countries.

WWASP
officials say most of the complaints
against them come from manipulative
teenagers who are proven liars, a retort
that Harris and Bock dismiss as evasive.

In
Dundee's case, some of the most stinging
criticisms were made not by students but
by a former director, Amberly Knight.
Now living in Michigan, Knight wrote a
detailed letter to PANI in March
outlining what she said were scandalous
conditions at the school, including
severe overcrowding in triple-bunks;
dubious medical care that included
prescribing drugs without parental
knowledge, double-charging for doctor
visits and the like; and widespread
reliance on physical punishment and
restraint.

Both Ken
Kay, the head of WWASP in Utah, and
Lichfield have been scathing in their
denunciation of Knight, whom they
describe, variously, as a disgruntled
former employee and a woman spurned
romantically by Joe Atkin, Dundee's
acting director at the time Bock
appeared.

Knight
insists she never meant her letter to
PANI to be made public and acknowledges
it may have violated the terms of a
nondisclosure agreement she signed with
Lichfield, but she stands by her
accusations, she said, and considers
Lichfield's and Kay's assaults on her
character as a base smear.

"Lichfield
did not care, and the children could not
complain to outside authorities,"
she said. "The children were
imprisoned in deplorable conditions that
we would not tolerate for adult, death
row inmates in America. The parents were
manipulated and misled by this
organization."

Some
authorities said Knight's letter
triggered PANI's investigation, but
officials give different starting dates
for the probe. Indeed, all the dates and
claims made by groups are confused. For
example, last October the U.S. embassy
said it had made eight visits to the
school since 2001, and that it forwarded
concerns to PANI, but none of those
concerns appears to have generated a
response.

Whatever
its starting date, the investigation's
pulse quickened May 20 with the arrival
at Dundee of Prosecutor Fernando Vargas
and an entourage of police and PANI
officials. The authorities told the
roughly 200 teenagers there that,
according to Costa Rican law, no one
could compel them to stay at Dundee and
they were free to do as they pleased.
Pandemonium ensued, with some kids
vandalizing cars and property and others
engaging in group sex around the pool,
witnesses said.

"We
had police officers with years of
experience telling us it was the most
grotesque, pornographic thing they've
ever seen," Lichfield said.

Some
three dozen students bolted. Though most
returned by the end of the day, a
handful wound up in PANI shelters.
Vargas and his team slapped Dundee with
citations for 15 violations of Costa
Rican law, ranging from sanitation
issues to staffers working without
proper permits or students with expired
visas. In addition, Costa Rica insisted
that Dundee register itself with the
Ministry of Education, something
Lichfield says he was told he did not
have to do when he opened his doors.
With the school effectively shut down
until those problems are sorted out,
Lichfield said his staff worked with
parents to fly students back to the
states or to other WWASP schools in
Mexico or Jamaica. More than two dozen
of those students are reportedly
enrolled at Tranquility Bay in Jamaica,
which is widely regarded as the toughest
WWASP institution.

Since
then, another prosecutor has taken over
the case from Vargas, who was
substituting at the time for a
prosecutor on vacation. Court officers
declined to comment on the case, but the
chaotic and confusing nature of the
investigation has led to some
finger-pointing behind the scenes. Last
week, the government announced it had
appointed an "ombudsman" to
review the actions not only of the
prosecutors and PANI, but also of the
Ministries of Health and of Education.

Lichfield
freely acknowledges he was not
registered with any of those agencies.
Though that appears to support Bock's
contention the school deliberately flew
under radar, Lichfield said Dundee was
no secret to the government. In the
past, he said, some PANI officials had
dropped by Dundee and there were no
problems. Had they been willing to
discuss the matter, rather than appear
in force on the campus, he said he would
have rectified any alleged violations.

"I've
got $2 million invested down here in
Dundee, and do you think I'd let that
all go down the drain because of some
ticky-tack complaints that I could
easily fix?" he said.